Waving the flag for diamonds and pearls - Style - International Herald Tribune

LONDON — The American flag, its tassels blowing as if in a stiff breeze, is center front in all its ruby red, diamond white and sapphire blue glory. To its right, in a leather jewel box undulating with sensuous curves, glints a piece of the French Crown jewels, acquired by Tiffany which, in the words of this very newspaper in 1887 announced that by buying one third of the royal treasure, "Tiffany takes the cake."

These two pieces - one linear, dynamic and modern, the other voluptuous and historic, open the first comprehensive exhibition of Tiffany jewels since a New York "fancy goods store" founded in 1837 turned itself into a "palace of jewels" and ultimately into an international brand.

"Bejewelled by Tiffany 1837-1987," at London's Gilbert Collection, Somerset House (from June 24 to Nov. 26) tells in diamonds, in freshwater pearls, in nature studies and in sculpted modernism the story of Tiffany and the history of the United States. Wall posters of iconic figures - Abraham Lincoln's wife Mary Todd Lincoln in lustrous pearls, Elizabeth Taylor in the dolphin brooch given to her by Richard Burton to celebrate the movie "Night of the Iguana," a radiant Jacqueline Kennedy with a gold bracelet and the Tiffany mascot Audrey Hepburn - show the vitality of this all-American brand.

The surprise of the collection is not the sweeping silver bracelets from Elsa Peretti - one of a handful of strong designers tapped to inject fresh blood into Tiffany - but rather the cornucopia of designs from the early 19th century. That was when the jeweler, like the country, was absorbing the wealth and recovery of the nation after the Civil War and stepping away from dependence on Europe.

"The flag sums up patriotism, Charles Tiffany's vision and his sense of America as an emerging nation," says the curator Clare Phillips of the Victoria and Albert Museum. "Tiffany is an American institution."

Not that the jewels themselves were always American. Charles Lewis Tiffany used the skills of the Paris jeweler René Lalique and had a French company design a moonstone and diamond cameo of American politicians. But displays of American freshwater pearls prove that Tiffany was an early champion of American stones for bridal suites and for holiday displays where "every daughter in New York insists her Pa shall go on Christmas."

Phillips tells the Tiffany story not just in the exhibition, where the narrow corridors and small vitrines are designed to echo the Tiffany stores pictured on the walls, but also in the accompanying densely illustrated book.

The striking displays include busts sculpted from gray clay. They are festooned with magnificent jewels, from laced choker to trembling "feather" aigrette, to show how the matrons of railroad millionaires displayed their wealth and status in what Phillips calls America's "gilded age."

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The same dusty gray is formed into gardens as a backdrop to the naturalistic jewels by Tiffany's distinguished jeweler G. Paulding Farnham, whose orchid brooches, with livid, gleaming spots, caused a sesation at the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle.

When Louis Comfort Tiffany took over from his father in 1902, Tiffany's style was more exotic. But the love of nature was reprised by Jean Schlumberger, brought in to the company in 1956. His jeweled bird, perched on a canary diamond, has a showcase of its own and represents the artistry of a designer whom the magazine editor Diana Vreeland claimed was not a fantasist, because "he so well understands the fantastic beauty of the world."

The Gilbert Collection offers a small space to tell the Tiffany story, but its director, Timothy Stevens, has made a point of encouraging jewelry shows, starting with the runaway success of JAR jewelry in the winter of 2002-2003 and continuing with an American jewelry show last year.

"I like the way that Tiffany is fresh and vigorous - very un-European and it breaks with the European hierarchy of values - liking diamonds best," says Stevens, referring to the use of American stones, color and the way the company kept "reinventing" itself.

The 20th century goes at a fast pace, from the graphic work in the Art Deco years, associated with the clean, streamlined American style, through the brash "cocktail" jewels of the 1940s, with their vivid stones and gold mounts. The show underscores the work of all of Tiffany's designers - not just today's John Loring, who had the vision to introduce Paloma Picasso in 1980, but also Donald Claflin, who brought a jet-set luxury - exemplified by the photograph of Ira von Fürstenberg wearing a belt hung with Claflin's sea dragon designs.

The democratization of jewelry, introduced by Peretti's sculpted silver bangles, is continued with a final window of Tiffany's latest design partnership with the architect Frank Gehry.

To satisfy the current insatiable demand for celebrity, the show could have done with a few more emotional pieces imbued with human history. But the fine collection, 95 percent from Tiffany's own archives, offers a rare overview of a jeweler that reflects the freedom and energy of the New World and that, in 1876, was already called "the representative jeweler of America."